


Hoping for Hope

by Iron



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, One-Shot, angsty, pre-movie events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 12:08:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just, once, before ‘68, he thought he would – would hope, feel wonder, remember, dream if he found someone else - but he had been wrong, then, to.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Because everything is linked, when it comes to belief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoping for Hope

“Let’s play a game,” the North Wind says, and snatches him up from his tree branch. It’s a snow day in Texas, because Jack is too young to understand that Mother Nature does not touch these places for a reason and it will be a lesson hard learned, and he has not yet bored himself watching the joy of the children, and so he screams, and fights, and swings his staff. 

The Wind laughs, and tumbles him in its arms, dropping him and picking him up like a game of catch. “Play!” The Winds shriek, for East and West have joined in, “Play with us bringer-of-snow!” 

And Jack laughs, and forgets the children, and plays with the Winds. He is young yet, after all, and does not yet carry the burden of invisibility – he still has Hope. 

 

\--

 

Two hundred thirty seven years is a long time to wait. It is a long time to be alone – the Winds cannot touch him, cannot hold him, are only alive in the strictest sense – and it is a long time to have Hope. 

But there is no Hope without Memory, and the only thing he remembers is the dark, and the cold, and the moon. The Moon’s voice has faded with the passage of time, with the wear and tear of each remembrance, and now it is a tired, empty thing. He does not wish to remember the other two, and so they are stronger, brighter. 

There are snow-day memories, and ice-skating, and flying, and falling, those of numbing scraped knees and nipping at children’s noses, a growing collection of them that he holds tight to his chest, determined to never forget. But there is no point if he has no one to share them with, and nothing to do with them, and so one by one they slip through his fingers like melted snow. 

He forgets the name of the first child to feel his happy-snow. He forgets the color of the little girl who stopped crying when he made it snow’s hair. He forgets the color of the wings of the swallow that he found frozen in the snow. He forgets… And then, one day, he forgets to remember. It is not such a tragedy. Not like he had anything to remember, after all. 

\--

 

Sometimes, Jack will make it snow especially hard on Christmas Eve so that when the kids wake up and go outside they’ll stare up in wonder. 

Painters drag out their easels and paints, their cameras, their pens and pencils and markers in a fruitless effort to capture his winter wonderland. 

He enjoys it, emptily, because in the plush snow his feet leave prints, and they never question where the extra snowballs come from, and sometimes, if he’s extra careful, no one will walk through him and he can pretend it’s because they see him. 

The little boys and girls are sweet, tucked and bundled in too many layers, scarves and hats and jackets, warm muffs and gloves, boots and stockings and long underwear, and he sends his frost to nip their noses and the Wind to tug at their clothes. He laughs with them, gives them snow to sled on and pack into snowballs and forts, the wind to make them run faster, ride faster, make them squeal in delight at everything they do. 

And then one of them gets cold, and goes inside, and there’s lunch, and dinner, and night falls, and he’s alone again. 

The win tumbles him to the top of a house, and he perches there, chest heaving with something he has come to recognize but has no name for. Jack Frost looked out over his spun-sugar town and feels nothing. There is no Wonder there. 

 

\--

 

He does not sleep. 

Jack has never thought much of this before. He is a spirit, after all, his is winter and frost and neither of them sleep – nature does not rest. 

But if you don’t sleep, you don’t dream. Jack knows the Sandman from his nights in the sky, and thinks little of it when he gets no visit for himself. 

Winter does not sleep, and Jack does not dream. 

Not for three hundred years. 

 

\--

(Just, once, before ‘68, he thought he would – would hope, feel wonder, remember, dream if he found someone else - but he had been wrong, then, to)

**Author's Note:**

> I know I should be working on other stuff... But I couldn't resist. ^^'
> 
> And poor Jack - MiM really messed up with leaving him alone, didn't he?


End file.
